It’s an understatement to say companies are drowning in digital information. Since the death of the floppy disk and the rise of networked computing, barriers to creating and sharing information have steadily come down. Combined with increased digitization paper-laden business processes, most companies find themselves struggling to harness the volume and diversity of information on their networks for business benefit. What’s startling is just how little progress we've made in maximizing the value and minimizing risks associated with the digital content and data we collect.

Any discussion of information governance always brings me back to this depressing little anecdote:

"Monday September 8, 2008, is a day that the executives at United Airlines will remember. The company’s stock fell 76 percent to $3 by 11:08 a.m. when trading was halted. The decline was not the result of a pending acquisition or recent financial results announced by the company. Instead, an article that said “UAL Declares Bankruptcy” appeared on the South Florida Sun Sentinel Web site that Sunday, got picked up by Google News, and then quickly summarized and republished to Bloomberg by a reporter tasked with summarizing stories about companies in distress. Then the trading began and the stock collapsed. The problem: the article was from 2002, not 2008."